Assessment of Carotid Intima-Media Thickness in Ischemic Stroke: Study at a Central Indian Tertiary Care Institute.

Stroke includes one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality globally. Carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) is correlated with most of the major cardiovascular risk factors. IMT was correlates with CAD and enhances the predictive power for stroke and Cardiovascular events. We determined the presence of signicant CIMT in patients with acute ischemic stroke of anterior circulation and matched it with controls. Sixty-six patients with ischemic stroke diagnosed by CT brain and fty controls matched by age, gender, diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemia were taken. Subjects were scanned with Doppler studies (Alpinion machine) using a high frequency (10-12 MHz) linear probe in B-mode. CIMT was measured, presence of plaques noted. The mean age in the patient group was 56.4 years reecting a relatively younger population with a male predominated (80.3%) pattern. The average CIMT in the patient group was 0.796 mm while it was 0.546 mm in the control group (P <0.0001). Patients with carotid plaque showed a signicant IMT (0.98 +- 0.21) when compared to patients without plaques (0.68 +- 0.20) (P <0.001). CIMT was signicantly related with advancing age (P < 0.05). CIMT showed independent association with plaques.